“This was taken when Tucson first started,” wrote an anonymous “Mom” on the reverse side of this 1945 postcard. “It’s a big city now…Drink your milk and be good…”

Unfortunately, “Mom’s” brief message to her daughter is rather misleading. The picture on the postcard is not of when Tucson “first started,” but rather a picture of a post office built on a lot at Old Tucson Studios.

Old Tucson was originally built in 1939 as the set for the motion picture “Arizona.” It was intended as nothing more than a loose replication of a little adobe town that might have looked something like Tucson did in the 1860s. With an outlay of $250,000, Columbia Pictures hired local carpenters who constructed more than 50 buildings in the space of 40 days, and Papago (Tohono O’odham) artisans made more than 350,000 adobe bricks used to create authentic Southwest structures.

Despite what “Mom” had written to her daughter, Tucson was not a “big city” in the 1940s. Nevertheless, Columbia Pictures staged the world premier of “Arizona” on Nov. 11, 1940, at the State Theater on Congress Street. Press reports indicated that most of Tucson’s 30,000 residents were affected by the affair. For an entire week, Arizona-related events were staged throughout Tucson, and the town assumed the ambience of a gala Hollywood party. The film’s star Jean Arthur came to town, and with her Columbia sent Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Charlie Ruggles and Kate Smith.

After the premier, Columbia’s quarter-million dollar investment surprisingly lay dormant in the desert sun. Not until 1945 was the set used again, and its use was as surprising as its dormancy. The Bells of St. Mary’s, the Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman feel-good classic—which had nothing to do with the Old West—was Old Tucson’s second film. During the next 15 years, just two movies were made there.

In 1959, entrepreneur Robert Shelton leased Old Tucson from Pima County and set about to renovate and update what had become a nearly abandoned relic. When Old Tucson Studios reopened in 1960, it did so as both a sophisticated movie set and a family-oriented Western theme park. Shelton knew what he was doing and Old Tucson was off and running.

During the next 35 years, the studio and set were home to more than 300 feature films, made-for-television movies, television series, documentaries and countless commercials. And by 1995, nearly half a million people a year visited the theme park.

On April 24, 1995, at about 6:30 p.m., fire erupted in the north end of Old Tucson where television’s Little House on the Prairie was filmed. It spread rapidly and burned until 1:30 a.m. the following morning. Twenty-five buildings, which comprised 40

per cent of the park, went up in flames. More than 300 firefighters from nearly a dozen agencies battled the blaze. Old Tucson was ruined.

In addition to the more than $10 million damage suffered by Old Tucson, the southern Arizona film industry entered a steep decline. Early in 1997, following a $13 million rebuilding effort, Old Tucson reopened. Regrettably, southern Arizona’s film industry has yet to rebound. —

—W. Lane Rogers. Picture courtesy the author.